Oleum Infirmorum

It must have been a copy of the parish magazine from the 1950s that recently came my way in which I learned that my illustrious predecessor-but-four Canon Artington had intended to start a healing service, which seemed a rather unusual thing for the time, and even more for a solemn graduate of King’s College London and St Stephen’s House. Without access to the service registers from then I don’t know whether anything came of it. Anyway, I had Canon Artington in mind on Tuesday when we had a contemporary go at the same kind of thing. It struck me months ago that there was an Autumn gap in the calendar of Churches Together in Hornington & District between the August open-air service and the Christmas excitements, and St Luke’s Day on October 18^th caught my eye. He is the patron saint of physicians. None of the local churches does anything explicitly connected to the healing ministry; as a healing service isn’t necessarily eucharistic, it ought to be something all our local congregations could subscribe to. Of course having come up with the idea I had created a rod for my own back in planning it, but in the event everyone I asked to take on a task said yes. It was quiet, reflective and candle-heavy, with piano music and a modest schola singing the Ubi Caritas, laying-on-of-hands and anointing in the proper manner, and a team from Tophill to provide individual prayer if people wanted it – in fact that caused the only slip in the liturgy as they were still praying with some people as the main action reached a pause, with no sign that they were coming to a halt: even in a ‘quiet and reflective’ event, if you are sitting doing nothing when you know that there’s something left that you will be doing, there’s a point when expectation shifts uncomfortably into tension. I found myself approaching the service with more trepidation than I expected, and not for fear that it might go wrong or nobody turn up, but that I was deeply unworthy to be saying the words I would have to. I kept a semi-fast through the day (fluids and bread only), and felt more acutely than usual having to recall that these are the declarations and actions of Christ, not me. As well as being candle-heavy, the service was also clergy-heavy, but their feedback afterwards was especially appreciative. Perhaps clergy have an unusual need for the healing grace of the Spirit.